 So, hey everyone, since I was going to model these characters for the Settlers project, I decided to just record the entire process. So throughout these videos I will go over my workflow and approach on creating them while giving some tips and tricks along the way. These videos are almost little tutorials but I'm not really spending much time on them to give any concrete structure or much of editing in general. You can see them a bit more like recorded live streams of sorts. You of course know the situation that's going on in the world right now which caused me and all of my coworkers to work from home for now. So my sound quality is not going to be the best and from time to time you will hear noises from outside my home or the inside since I am living with my colleague and roommate Hjalte and his little adorable cat Pixel which also has like a sixth sense for making noise in the right amount of time. So let's dive straight in with the first character called Lunte. Right now on the screen I'm just showing some of the original concept art from Vivian that she made. She gave a lot of different variations which is really interesting. A lot of these are, at first they were way more detailed than we originally wanted to go for like there is a certain level of complexity that we wanted to strike with this model with this character overall and some of these had like some really interesting elements that we wanted to pursue further like for example having a mostly flat face with like additional elements on top and these sort of like more stumpy triangle legs and general in general way more simplified shapes. So if you look at all of these there's a bunch of them that went way more complex than we wanted to go for like for example this one where like as soon as you add more intricate facial features that are all modeled into the face it becomes really difficult because then you really need to have a lot of topology to support these structures and also the various ways they can deform into. So that's definitely way more complex and some of these are looking really nice but they would only really work from a certain angle so that's also something we were constantly thinking about. So we wanted something that is in general relatively easy to model and to animate and would easily fit into mostly any scene that you would fit it into so you could just place it anywhere, pose it and it wouldn't just all fall apart immediately. So a very flexible little character. So the design that we kind of wanted to explore further is 11 over here which has had this really interesting idea of this like half, yeah this sort of like plate as a face like it's sort of a mask. We had various design ideas with like as an astronaut or a kid in like a pillow suit or anything sort of as an adventurer who's exploring new worlds. And this little guy is definitely really interesting with the design. So Vivian made some more concepts about the facial expressions, the different hairstyles and how this could exactly work in 3D. One of the interesting challenges that is important to mention for the modeling is definitely the flat face. So since we want to have this character work from different angles it's important that like if it would just be flat then you would really only want to show this character from the front because once you see this character from the side or the back it just doesn't really work anymore. So what we ended up deciding on is to make the mask over all more curved. So even if you see him from the profile or directly from the side you could still have some playroom to adjust the facial expression. So the idea is we wanted to make these facial expressions, these facial features as simple as possible. So this is just going to be separate shapes, modeled completely separately as like curves and anything that you can deform into various shapes. So you could just define the eyes to be perfectly spherical, more oval or more of a U shape or even square or whatever. You would have complete freedom over it and it would just snap onto the mask. So having this curved surface gives some playroom from more angles. So you would see it from the side and you could still kind of position the two eyes to be on one side of the mask on one half. So it can be really abstract and then over here with the facial expressions you can also see yeah you could really push it with the mouth. So we want to have this like kind of sausage rounded lip and then this is actually a pretty tricky question that we brought up with the design because the mask is going to be metal and it won't really deform with the mouth, it shouldn't at least. We decided okay the inside of the mouth it's just going to be a filled shape that's just going to be black or at least some dark color with some fake normals via the shading. So it will imply that it goes a bit inwards into the mask but it's going to be so abstract and stylized that it's just going to be an empty hole that doesn't go that deep. And then with the tongue that would just be tongue and teeth those would just be additional shapes that are going to be as flat as possible so that they don't intersect with the black plane with the inner mouth. So the mouth can be just basically still completely free to deform however you want and it can even just go outside of the mask and it can just handle it. Apart from that Vivian went into some more color variations but this is also an interesting point with the level of complexity of the mask and the eye shape. So over here like I really wanted to dissect all of these concepts to give us some to inform how the shapes should be modeled so that we can later on really more easily rig and animate this. This shouldn't have a lot of constraints on it as in it should be as easy as possible to pick up and to animate in any situation. So with these sorts of masks we really wanted to push this flat as possible face shape over here. So this front face of the mask needs to be as flat as possible to support placing the eyes and the mouth anywhere we want because like for example in this little expression over here like the eyes are just gone it's just the entire mask is filled with a mouth. So this absurdity that's something that should be supported by the mask shape so the eyebrows over here shouldn't be hard modeled in a way that kind of frames where you can put these facial elements and this sort of little dividing line in the middle the sharp crease is also just going to cause problems if you want to place both eyes on one side for example. So we kind of went for H over here and we wanted to just subtly imply this little eyebrow line over here on the mask. So this is just going further with the concepts and Vivian already started exploring some more three-dimensional turnarounds so one of the things we came away with to support seeing those facial features from the side is to actually make like kind of bevel and round off the sides of the mask. So you could if you wanted to place the eyes on one side of the mask and the mouth really weirdly here on the side and it would just snap onto it. If it would be this beveled this essentially extruded face over here and that would just be this hard cut and you can't really easily place anything there. So another question that came with it is if it's in this like kind of half cylinder with the rounded edge on the bottom, how is this going to inform the shape from the top? So is there going to be this cut out in the like where the face essentially is or is it just going to be a solid shape? So we went for this cut out to kind of nudge the head and the hair further into the mask and really close off this entire shape because the body is really simple. It's essentially just a bunch of cylinders and it's really way simpler to model and later to animate. But with the mask, if you would see it like slightly from the back or the side, how is this all going to fit together with the face, with the actual face, the actual head of the character. So we try to merge all of this as much as possible. Almost like with if you ever watched Adventure Time, the main character is just this single shape like there is just no neck or like it's a seamless transition from head to neck to body. And this is something that really should happen over here. So we don't even imply that there is a head. It's just all hidden by the mask, the hair, and then the neck is really just an extension of the body. So we kind of ended up with this concept over here. This is the final painting or so far final painting from Vivian. And yeah, you can really see there's like this nice little modeled increase on the top of the mask. It's really implied that this is metal and there's like these bolts on the side and the eyes and the mouth are going to be these separate curved shapes that are just snapped onto the surface. And you can just freely move them around. They're not attached to anything really. Then the hair is probably going to be the most complex part in terms of modeling, but it's really important that like if I zoom in over here, this is just the turnaround that the hair is enclosing like this entire thing. So it's wrapping in so nicely with the mask that you never get to see any ears or any like a jaw or anything like that. And then the suit, the sort of rubbery suit is extending so far up that you only get the sort of turtleneck up here. That's just closing everything off. There's still, of course, what's so great. Like if you have a like normally sometimes you would start modeling a character just from a painting or a single drawing and you really need to interpret all of this yourself, but it can be really helpful to have this this extra turntable where you can just clearly see how the different shapes of the body relate to each other and how the proportions exactly work because this sort of angle, this is the the really complex part of even a simple character like this. How do you handle like how does the head actually relate to any of this? If I look at this, I might actually still increase the thickness of the mask because right now here's still some space where you could actually see a jaw or a head. And I really want to wrap this up with with the neck seamlessly going into the face. So you can see over here, this line over here, this is the turtleneck going up the body and it's kind of going all the way up here. And then it's just going to be this kind of thick sausage shape. That's how I imagine it. And this is just going to wrap around the this line over here. And that is then directly connecting to the hairline. So there's like all the hair over here, which is just directly touching the turtleneck and then over here, the straps of the of the metal mask that are just sinking directly into the hair. In terms of the rest of the body, it's it's really like with the hands, for example, it's just going to be basically just a bunch of extruded cylinders with enough geometry to to deform the character in various ways. Like it would be nice if this can be really animated in an elastic way. So that's something I want to aim for. And the thumb over here, you can see that it's kind of shrinking down towards the connection of the rest of the hand. So this could just be there could be just extra cartoony bones that just completely where you can scale and rotate and just completely deform these features however you want. So the geometry should just support this. So even though this is a very simplified shape, it should just still have enough geometry to skew and and just make it as flexible as possible. With the hair, it's just basically going to just be animated as like a single strand, like a single clump of hair. But I actually gathered some little inspirations. I wanted to look up some like style references online. Like, is there anything on like my huge Pinterest boards where I basically collect anything that looks remotely interesting or inspirational from the Internet? And I just wanted to look, is there anything that someone else has already done that could that I could draw some inspiration from? And I think this simplified model by Amad Mehab is really interesting where he also does this thing where the the head is essentially just a very simplified shape. It's just mostly just a slightly like on a slightly deformed sphere, like a cube sphere. And the eyes and the mouth are just extra elements that are either textured or just projected on top of it. So this is the sort of thing I want to go forward to, except for like we wouldn't have a nose or more complex elements like these seams, probably. I mean, we are going to have like smaller beveled creases in there. But it's mostly going to be pretty simplified and stylized. The only other like this is, of course, these are way more complex these models. But what I'm looking for specifically over here is the style of the hair. So what's interesting with this is the hair is definitely more complex than other parts of the body. There's more intricate little shapes and spikes that are coming out of it. And I'm I definitely want to go for something in that vein. We can still like texture or shade extra detail on top of it. But it should be a more hard modeled simplified shape. This is way more the hair shape, overall, is somewhat what I want to go for. But just with smaller spikes for our character. So this guy definitely has way smaller spikes going on over here. But overall, this would just be like just modeled straight into it. It's going to take quite a little bit more time with retopologizing it, but that's fine. And then with this one, it's also really interesting how these shapes kind of flow back into each other. And there can still be like some extra hair strands just with bump maps or any sort of texturing or shading just added on top. I'm just mostly thinking on like the basic shapes right now. And this is essentially it just for the for the overall background of like the design and what I want to go for. I will commentate more on top of it like once we actually get into the modeling. But yeah, let's just dive straight in.